


Skullduggery

by YankingAwry



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And super self-involved, Fairly Reliable Narrator, M/M, The skull is sentient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4346504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YankingAwry/pseuds/YankingAwry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's when-I-say-friend has a name, and it's not Billy, though that's close enough.<br/>Even skulls need to pontificate once in a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skullduggery

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when an unstoppable brain-fart meets an immovable head canon.  
> I blacked out with Word open, and when I woke up, this was just sitting there, all typed up.  
> In my defence, it was a very grave brain-fart

I must admit that I am still fond of Sherlock Holmes. I think of him as a close acquaintance, or distant friend-- one who has changed time zones and insincerely sworn to keep in touch, resulting in (blessedly) little interaction. We are but an occasional, warm presence on each other’s minds. It is a relationship that needs very little validation. Healthy, even, were it not for my unfortunate condition.

Nevertheless. Counterfactual thinking is for the living. 

He found me during his dark period (i.e.: fix-craving, dry-mouth, slow-to-blink days). Stole me from his dealer’s mahogany cabinet, (didn’t care much for that top drawer. It was dusty, cramped. I was wedged next to shot glasses from Las Vegas. Highly indecent cartoon breasts) while the man searched for his digital weighing scale. I was then transferred to a duffel bag, containing the aforementioned scale and a pound of cocaine. My initial characterisation of Sherlock as an addict and kleptomaniac was, needless to say, half incorrect (or half correct. I am, at heart (ha!), a critical being). I now believe the two thefts were a form of petty revenge, for having been sold a woefully diluted morphine solution.

The dealer’s goons found him that same day and cheerfully beat him to within an inch (or less) of his life, stripping him of his clothes and his bag- but they let him keep me, which was also, very much, a form of petty revenge.

I suppose, from a third person’s perspective, it would have been a sight to see. A naked man clutching a skull, stomping his feet and yelling at CCTV cameras.

A few hours later, the elder brother-- Mycroft-- attempted to pry me out of Sherlock’s hands. A dramatic tussle. Flattering at first, but I know better now. Chess pieces-- a toothbrush-- an errant word-- all could serve as a fitting proxy for reasons to battle between those two.

 

The curious coincidence is that while my name is not Billy, my moniker may have well been, had I been born in England. My parents christened me Wilhelm. It has been an age since I thought in German; I crossed the strait on a steamer too long ago for that. I count upwards whenever I’m bored, to see if I still can, and like a _Kleinkind_ I start to hesitate by the time I reach _vierzig_. For all intents and purposes, I am now (maddeningly) British.

Had I preserved my Teutonic roots, I believe I would’ve been a delight to converse with. When non-natives speak or write in English, there is almost always a lovely transliteration of feelings, an extraordinary arrangement of ordinary words, which is most pleasing to the ear. And as it stands, I can be quite eloquent.

 

At first, when there was Sherlock, I was talked at. Extensively. And I even kept up at times, I should think-- whatever little he had to say on History or Economics intrigued me, but mostly I was strung along on a complex, meandering path of self-discovery, both scientific and emotional.  The days Sherlock railed on man’s fickle, sentimental nature were when I knew he had upset someone, and had been upset in return. The feverish, staccato-infused monologues that followed, on molecules and other incomprehensible things, indicated rejuvenation-- a sanitisation from feelings. A fresh firing of neurons, ideas sparking off each other, waiting for something doused in gasoline to offer itself up.

Truth be told, it was I who began to tire of him first. By the third year, I was acclimated to his brilliance, I no longer marvelled at it as I used to. Perhaps he saw this, and was offended-- perhaps some mysterious pattern in my ossified cells signalled to him, urging him to find someone who would not only think ‘amazing’ and ‘fantastic’, but say the words out loud; who would not think of their buxom, long-dead, almost-fiancé in Rhine while he lovingly played Mendelssohn. Someone, whose interests aligned neatly with his, condensing inwards to a single focal point-- Sherlock Holmes himself. And so began the era of John Watson.

 

I now spend the days atop my humble abode, the mantelpiece in flat 221B. It is a helpful vantage point for when things get dull inside my cranium, which happens, but is rare, given that I am highly interesting (and especially, to myself). I have, at any given point of time, between two to seven items of contraband just shy of peeking out from my eye sockets. Once, I remember obscuring two separate packets of cigarettes from view: the first put there by Sherlock, and the second by John, unbeknownst to either- hidden with diametrically opposite intents. Mycroft pocketed both, resulting in an entire week of misplaced, suspicious glares.

 

Time passes slowly when you are a skull. I have my inner musings and self-framed platitudes to help me along, but I sometimes wonder if I have a _real_ personality. I know I was Wilhelm: Renaissance enthusiast, bratwurst aficionado. First kissed by Greta, the farm girl (we could have wed, we would have wed. Oh, Greta), in the winter of 1899. It was the turn of a century- I knew this, not from the almanac, but through an indefinable, momentous _something_ I felt on her soft lips.

I know these things, but I am often removed from them. I access them with an indifference I cannot help. I view them from the other side. The memories are filmed over with dust and distance. It is only a matter of time before they are assigned to the metaphorical rubble heap.

At times I think of this as a sign of growing omnipotence. And then, there are times when I experience a burst of _feeling_ \- rage at piss splatter from a steady stream of urine into the fireplace beneath, say, when I felt like giving an irreverent scoundrel the socking he was never bestowed at birth. I feel stirrings of the old Wilhelm at such moments. The recollection is not unpleasant. Indeed, it is faintly nostalgic.

Perhaps this in-between: it is the new _me_.

 

I share the mantelpiece with a host of other items. The Lucky Cat, an Oriental curiosity, picked up without payment from a smuggler’s antique shop. The Penknife, slipped out without remorse from the back pocket of the Czech ambassador- as disassociated from his letter opener as his country became from the Soviet. There was even, at one point, The Woman’s Phone- an artefact of double thievery, of double bluff. Yes, the mantelpiece is a shrine to stolen goods, carefully curated by our eccentric owner. It is a wonder he hasn’t carved out John’s Heart and placed it right next to us, the organ oozing blood and naked fondness. For who better to recognise denial, than the dead? The living room reeks of unsaid affection and bitterness (there was a hiatus, yes, during which I was grateful for the housekeeper’s-- beg pardon, landlady’s intermittent dusting). Sometimes, I am exasperated by the antics and avoidances: at other times, I cannot bring myself to care. When one calls the other an ‘idiot’ and the other returns ‘prat’, blind in the face of a stupendously layered irony, of how well the adjectives fit should they be exchanged and tried on--

What a fruitless, frustrating train of thought.

A glance adeptly concealed-- a meaningful stare blinked away-- that is all it takes, before the word ‘late’ changes, from describing a missed opportunity, to prefacing one’s name in the obituary.

Oh, Greta. Sweet Greta.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to correct/tweak/suggest stuff for the scant German I've used in the fic, please do.


End file.
